


Sculpture

by TerokNorTailor



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 23:16:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1620482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerokNorTailor/pseuds/TerokNorTailor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Why don't you be the artist and make me out of clay?" - Ellie Goulding, "The Writer"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sculpture

He had spent so much time far away from the woman he knew as Kira Nerys, often addressed simply as 'major.' Minutes away from seeing her again, he checked his face in the mirror to see the face that would greet her.

47 years felt so long.

Time didn't used to go this way for Odo, no.

When one spends half the day in a bucket consumed with a single-track motivation, everything becomes secondary. The people move in predictable trajectories, always ending up where one expects.

There is no thinking.

No desire.

Just making sure that everyone falls where they should.

Sentient life for Odo was a featureless funnel as he poured from one day to the other, not leaving anything behind as he traveled down the smooth, sloped surface.

Some had scratched that surface, but Odo had always made sure to buff the scratches out, filling them in with more of himself.

Kira's were the only scratches he left to stay.

They became deeper, and filled with her being. He couldn't know what that being actually felt like, though, due to the unavoidable difference in physiology.

The Station's chief medical officer had incredulously compared his sensory capabilities to that of a "computerized wireframe gleaned from a laser scanner" after another enthused inquiry about Changeling anatomy, if one could even call it that.

"An organically generated liquid crystal!"

Odo could recall the exact intonation the Doctor had used after he had discovered the regular alignment of his cellular makeup and how the alignment formed in a manner directly proportional to an electric current applied to it. Mora had discovered the same thing, only in a much different way.

Some years after he let Kira's outstretched arm disappear as the Great Link clouded his view he realized that time would have etched lines into her skin as it did with the other Humanoids.

Odo did his best to recall the bowed rays emanating from the outer corners of Sisko's eyes as he smiled and the deep parentheses that embraced the mouths of Jadzia and Quark laughing after they shared a joke he personally found in bad taste. He remembered the concerned lines just forming between Ezri's brows as they tilted up in the center, the same location which held a furious furrow between the Chief's downward tilted ones as he sweated over some technical difficulty. Odo had tried eyebrows before, but had always failed to animate them properly. Not a good move.

To be fair, attempting to replicate Worf's cranial ridges wasn't a good move either. That had startled the Weyoun who was serving as his aide and liaison to the Link.

Two solid years suspended within the fluid collective consciousness had gone by in what seemed like days - hours even. Nevertheless, the quiet afterwards had proved itself to be an immeasurable relief. It took another three years with shorter periods of direct connection and more frequent breaks for him to feel secure enough with the rest of the Changelings' resolve to follow the new direction he had proposed.

From his new living arrangement aboard a demilitarized Jem'Hadar battleship, Odo had facilitated the separation of the three species that had made up the Dominion. It took another fifteen years of genetic engineering to restore autonomy to the Vorta and Jem'Hadar. First, personalities stopped being implanted from one deceased Vorta clone to another in favor of letting the new beings form their own personality and take their own names. His aide, however, requested to be implanted with the memories of the previous Weyouns in order to know how his predecessors were complicit in the atrocities of the Dominion War in order to avoid doing so again. He even went so far as to take the name of the one who had helped to commit such grievous acts to serve as a reminder to do his utmost to clear that name of such a heinous legacy.

Second, the Jem'Hadar were cured of their addiction to Ketracel-white. This was achieved by a radical retroviral gene therapy to alleviate the addiction of those who held the war-era genotype. Many Jem-Hadar chose to keep their loyalty to the Vorta who had headed their unit for familiarity's sake. This worried Odo, but the species who had been under the Founders' control were now free people. He could only hope that, in time, both would find joy in something other than warfare or the control of others.

As he thought about his recent past, he consciously let his brow wrinkle. A learned reflex to feelings of concern. Had he done right by the Gamma Quadrant by dissolving the Dominion? He had certainly done right by the Alpha Quadrant, however the Dominion had been such a longstanding power beyond the wormhole that his concern was relegated mostly to whether or not it would rear it's ugly head once more.

An old Terran myth came to mind - one that had been constantly reworked in their romantic novellas. Heracles and his many labors.

Had he merely beheaded a hydra? More importantly, had he cauterized the exposed flesh adequately enough?

That concern would have to wait.

Weyoun 10 had sent a comm informing Odo that the wormhole - the Celestial Temple - had just opened up on the port side of the ship.

Gold light swirled with blue as it streamed in through the newly added windows of the former battle cruiser. Its subtle flicker illuminated Odo's sculpture - his face, his hands, his body, his entire being - and was reminiscent of the first time he had created himself into a similar light for Nerys. It felt like she was doing the same for him through the light of the passageway to Deep Space 9.

"Orders, Odo?" Weyoun's voice was so distant, and Kira was so close.

He stepped out of the command quarters and into the short hallway that lead to the ship's bridge. Odo was running by the time he got there.

The wormhole was there - brilliant and beckoning. Weyoun's eyes were wide and surprised at the changeling's quick entrance.

"Full impulse. Straight to DS9."

...And Nerys...

Light enveloped the ship and in moments dissolved into the familiar clawlike form of the Station.

Home.


End file.
